How much has been lost in pursuit of convenience with the "learning anytime, anywhere" model? This aphorism stresses delivery and access as central goals of its broad application. Distance or technology-enhanced learning is an important step forward for education in general, but the learning effectiveness is low. Much of the challenge…

Belonging, or the feeling of being a valued member of a community, has been linked to numerous positive outcomes in higher education. Although creating a sense of belonging at the campus level is important, equally important is fostering belonging in the classroom. Research has shown that belonging is more likely to occur in classes where students…

This research note aimed to highlight the reflections of the researcher while conducting videoconferencing interviews as a part of his doctoral research project. The researcher drew some inferences based on recent literature and two videoconferencing interviews conducted with the doctoral students via Zoom. It was a crucial experience to deal with…

The higher education participation and success rates of students in low socio-economic status (SES), regional, rural, remote, and isolated areas -- who often attend university later in life -- is a persistent concern in Australia and beyond. This article focuses on mature-aged students in low SES, regional and remote areas in Tasmania, Australia,…

Online students are often short-changed when they reach their most important milestone--graduation. For many institutions, virtual graduation has proven to be a holy grail of sorts--critically important to student experience, but illusive in form and difficult to achieve. This article explores several existing models of virtual graduations, and…

Many librarians struggle with how to balance scalable instructional offerings with more personalized instruction for online students--scale tends to come at the cost of personalization and vice versa. This paper will discuss three methods for connecting with online students that range from one-to-one personalization to widely scalable instruction:…

One of the major benefits of the face-to-face teaching environment is that social interaction opportunities are a natural part of the course: Learners meet in the same room for the same allotted period of time each week. This social opportunity is not organic to online courses; therefore, to have this social interaction as a part of online classes…

This report offers a framework for districts to use in their preparation to provide quality instruction through distance and blended models. In the wake of COVID-19, "teaching as usual" will be neither possible nor sufficient to meet students' needs because California's schools have experienced disruptions to each aspect of the…

In this paper, I map important "messy" elements that I learned from my five-month small-scale research project, one that was designed around pivotal works on online social research. I used computers and the Internet with Minan, a young man living in Guinea, West Africa, in order to examine his perceptions surrounding the value of these…

Oregon State University's demand for bandwidth to support scientific collaboration and research continues to grow exponentially, while state funding declines due to hard economic times. The challenge faced by these authors was to find creative yet fiscally responsible ways to meet OSU's bandwidth demands. Looking at their options for high-capacity…

One of the requirements of the Epsilon Pi Tau (EPT) initiation is the apprentice has to physically be at the initiation (EPT, 2004). Since the majority of nontraditional students and working professionals are physically removed from an initiation site, they have missed the opportunity to join EPT. On 8 April, 2005, the Beta Mu Chapter of The…

This paper centres on the sense of isolation that online study may engender among learners, a factor often ignored by many educators, but one that may make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful online learning environment for many students. The importance of a proper appreciation of the learners' social context is stressed, as is…